By Jun Ji-hye
The primary job of members of the National Assembly is to propose and debate the content of bills that sometimes become new legislation. However, criticism is mounting against them because the percentage of bills that are becoming laws has dropped despite a rise in the number of bills submitted to the parliament.
According to the Assembly, the total number of bills submitted to the 19th parliament is 5,144 as of Tuesday. Among those, around only 11 percent (555 bills) has been passed.
The number of proposed bills has been increasing constantly _ 2,570 in the 15th Assembly, 3,117 in the 16th, 8,368 in the 17th and 14,762 in the 18th.
However, the percentage of bills approved has been falling after recording 62.9 percent in the 15th Assembly. The 16th parliament saw 47 percent of bills passed, while 30.4 percent and 19.9 percent were passed in the 17th and 18th Assemblies, respectively.
Political commentators attributed the low success rate to lawmakers proposing bills without examining them sufficiently because they were competing against other members of the parliament.
“From the 17th Assembly, the parliament, civic groups and media have used the number of bills lawmakers propose as a criteria to evaluate the performances of legislators. So, lawmakers are issuing an excessive number of bills to attain results. This has resulted in them pushing for quantity-driven rather than quality-driven proposals,” said Shim Ik-sup, a professor at the department of public administration at Dongguk University.
Indeed, there are more cases of bills being abrogated or withdrawn than rejected after voting, which raised concerns that the bill proposals were poorly constructed from the beginning.
Shim said the focus on quantitative expansion leads to a lack of professionalism.
“I often attend open forums or seminars that lawmakers hold to discuss bills. But, I was skeptical about the feasibility of some of their proposals. In a number of cases, the proposals lack professionalism and discernment,” said Shim.
The professor said that lawmakers are obliged to reflect the diversity of needs within the public, but at the same time, they need to rationally filter these through sufficient discussion in order to reflect proper legal processes and parliamentary culture.
Vice Speaker of the National Assembly Park Byeong-seug also said to reporters: “Additional criteria to evaluate the performance of lawmakers are urgently needed to prevent a flood of ineffective bill proposals, which are a waste of time and energy.”